Subscribe To

Thursday, August 22, 2013

A definition of ostracization

I’ve been listening to Xenakis while half asleep against the grain of concrete walls. Louis Kahn had dreams of

flat surfaces grey or ashen and hard like leviathans guarding coin less realms of knowledge resting on a cliff,

facing an ocean that goes on until it pours off the edge of the earth. There are many railroad yards to travel through before all the cement in the Midwest rises over the hills and minor cloudbursts along the interstate.

W

hat streets of crushed rock and sand are those far beacons shining on.

Xenakis explodes on the faint threats of the avenue because there is nothing there until you drive into the

tall wall of seamless concrete grey as the fog that hides it. King Crimson chews up unlimited amounts of architecture that was stripped of every filigree and garnishment until only steel beams and poured cement remained to tell us how to live in the world we made false homes out of. John Cage finds a penny, he hits it with a mallet, he smiles, he grins, he sits in front of the piano, prepared for anything clothes pins could dampen. i am half asleep against the Le Corbusier's worst mood, every false turn a right note as Mingus would play it.

Ornette Coleman drags himself from his chair to the microphone and. lifts his plastic saxophone begins to play an alien chaos that makes the atoms of the tempered glass window separating the control room from the sound proof suffering spin even faster and then melt quite suddenly, leaving a hard, globular bit of bad attitude as Coleman finishes his run through the Scream Machine.

New York has a skyline that was once transcribed as music to crane your neck by. John Cage glides over the blades of grass , silent as shade on an alley wall, and appears suddenly and hungrily in a doorway at the top of a stoop. Over the rooftops there is construction everywhere, under the roofs are fights with knives and celebrity chef spitting contests.